a dog's life
A life that is difficult, unpleasant, or boring. You whipper-snappers think you've got a bright future ahead of you, but it's a dog's life, I tell you! I've had to lead a dog's life since college just to make ends meet. My poor dad lived a dog's life to provide for his kids, but we just wrote him off as a boring old nobody.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
dog's life
A miserably unhappy existence, as in He's been leading a dog's life since his wife left him. This expression was first recorded in a 16th-century manuscript and alludes to the miserable subservient existence of dogs during this era. By the 1660s there was a proverb: "It's a dog's life, hunger and ease."
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
a dog's life
an unhappy existence full of problems or unfair treatment. 1987 Fannie Flagg Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe The judge's daughter had just died a couple of weeks ago, old before her time and living a dog's life on the outskirts of town.
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017
a ˈdog’s life
(informal) a life in which there is not much pleasure or freedom: It’s a dog’s life having to do two jobs in order to survive.Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017
a dog's life
Miserable circumstances. The term has been traced to Erasmus, who pointed out the wretched subservient existence of dogs in the mid-sixteenth century, as well as to the seventeenth-century proverb, “It’s a dog’s life, hunger and ease.” It was certainly a cliché by the time Rudyard Kipling (
A Diversity of Creatures, 1899) wrote, “Politics are not my concern. . . . They impressed me as a dog’s life without a dog’s decencies.” See also
die like a dog.
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer